Of course Francois Hollande nominated Manuel Valls to Matigon, there was no other choice for him, a man whom I consider rather bland, charisma-less and incapable of sticking to a decision. After dangling the glorious suggestion of a Martine Aubry prime ministership, Francois Hollande settled for the safest pick. A change in government was needed, and after the crushing defeat that was suffered by his PS in the municipal elections, which are always used as a confidence vote to the party in power, nominating Valls looks like a sensible choice.
Manuel Valls has remained, despite the plummeting popularity of the past government he was part of, a very popular figure among the people of France. He is considered a center-left politician, as opposed to the duo of Hollande-Ayerault that seemed too catering to the left flank of the PS, unlike Valls who is popular among many members of the right due his rather conservative views on the Roma population, immigration and security policies. It made the most sense to make the most popular member of the cabinet Prime Minister and try to spread his popularity around. It also works as a shrewd political move by Hollande to make sure that Valls will not challenge him in the primaries of his party for the nomination in the upcoming presidential election of 2017. If the Valls government fails, so will his popularity and chances of winning a primary challenge. In the event of a successful Valls government however, Hollande would be able to claim the credit, and also it would not bode well for a Prime Minister to challenge his president in a primary as that would look very opportunistic and ruin the good and strong character reputation Valls has built for himself. It's a win win for Hollande who removes the chances of a Valls 2017 candidacy while also anointing him as heir to the the PS after he hopefully gets a second term,
Hollande also announced that the new government was to be a government of combat. Combat against the raising hard right (FN)? Or combat against the falling economy? In the case of both, Valls still is the perfect choice on paper. The new Prime Minister is known for his combative character and the facts that he does not switch positions very often. His forceful nature tends to generally give him the results he wants (see the affair Didier), therefore making him a perfect candidate to lead the so called combative government. The Ayerault era was marked by the flip flopping and the lack of steely decisiveness on many policy issues like, the Eco-Tax, the 75% tax rate on the wealthy, surrogacy for gays and lesbians, etc. That indecisiveness together with the lack of charisma in the Elysee, and feuding ministers projected the image of an incapable, dis-confident and disjointed government to the French people and abroad, it also made the steely character of Marine Le Pen and many FN candidates very attractive to the populace. Valls as Prime Minister will go ways in rectifying that situation. And combativeness will certainly be appreciated in seeking new solutions to lift France out of the horrible economic situation the country is in. This government needs to implement cures and stick to them and with Valls at the helm there is more of chance of that happening that there ever was under Ayerault.
The new cabinet is small, 16 ministers who will soon be joined by a couple of state secretaries as deleguates, a far cry from the formerly 38 strong government. Instead of listing all the ministers, I will write about the more interesting changes. To no one's surprise, Segolene Royal is back in the goverment as the ecology minister, but her portfolio will be heavy as she will also have energy. Aranud Montebourg becomes economy minister and still gets to keep the industrial renewal portfolio. Michel Sapin the previous minister of labour becomes the new minister of finances replacing Pierre Moscovici. The big surprise however is that Bernard Cazeneuve, who was previously budget minister becomes the new interior minister, replacing Valls. As excepted Christiane Taubira at justice and Laurent Fabius at foreign affairs keep their jobs. Najat Valluat-Belkacem (future president alert!) keeps her job as minister for women's rights and gets youth, sports and urban as a promotion. Wunderkind, young and PS rockstar Benoit Hamon becomes education minister. A nice note is the fact that there is perfect parity between the gender in this government 8 men and 8 women, despite that all the big offices except justice and culture are still occupied by men but progress is progress. Hollande and Valls managed have the perfect mix of leftist and centrist in the government averting the fear that many PS militant had of a very centrist Valls government.
The new government looks good, small but diverse and will probably be more efficient than previous. Francois Hollande has bad poll numbers and his presidency so far has looked like an exercise in failure and a change of government is excatly what he needs. For Hollande and the PS to have the chance at a second term at President of the French Republic, this government needs to work. Hopefully this is the government that will bring a little bit of prosperity back to the glorious land of France.
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